Chilhowee State Bank, 3d printed in HO scale

Inspired by Terry Lynch and Charlie Post.

Terry Lynch told Charlie who told me about this cool looking bank building in Chilhowee, Missouri. Certainly not a place I would have ever gone without their direction.  There are only two reasons to be in Chilhowee, you were going there, or you are lost, because it is not on the way to anywhere anyone should want to go.

Holly and I took a side trip to beautiful Chilhowee on a recent weekend getaway, just so I could take some pictures of the building.

The lighting wasn't good, but I just need to get some basic sizes down, and a feeling for the details.  It is a great size for a model railroad, obviously a very small building that can fit on any city street.

And yeah, it is still a bank, although it is my understanding that at one time it was a residence.

It sits on a corner, and they have a drive up window on the East side.  

I was not sure what to do with the two small windows that have been filled in, but I went with glass blocks, maybe restrooms?

I started the drawing by importing multiple pictures of the building in to SketchUp, and then sizing them to full scale.  So basically, I just drew a side, while looking at the picture beside it.  I started the drawing while displaying many of my 3d printed items and the Maker Faire at Union Station here in Kansas City.  It was a two day event, but I was able to get this far during those two days.  

I tried to back date the building to what I thought it would have looked like in the 1940's.  I put back in all the windows that have now been filled in, and I put in a period door to match the windows.  If I were to hazard a guess, I would say at this point, I had about 20 hours in the drawing.

Here is a view of just the drawing.  Note the bracing I have drawn in the inside of the building.  This allows me to make the walls fairly thin to speed printing time, yet the bracing adds strength and cuts down on any flexing of the walls.  

To eliminate the need for support material to hold up any overhangs, I broke the building up in to six separate print jobs.  The glass block window are printed out of a different material than the rest of the project, so they are printed by themselves.  

All the 3d printed parts.

Here the main walls are being assembled.  I don't think I have ever used that many clamps at one time before, but it all lined up pretty well.  If I had to do it over again, I would probably use some styrene strips for bracing on the back sides, just to help line the walls up flush with each layer.  

In this primed view, you can see the interior bracing.  I make the thickness of the bracing around the windows the same thickness as the windows, so the thickest part of the window is flush on the inside, making it easy to line them up correctly.

I hand painted this particular building, but one could spray it, and come back and touch up the concrete areas, or, for that matter, paint it anyway you like.

I could not find any commercially available windows that would work for this building, and, if you have seen any of my other buildings, you know that HO scale windows are a really at the edge of what the Afinia will print.  You can see above that I have cleaned out some of the top glass pane areas with a hobby knife to get rid of the rounded corners.  It just takes a few minutes, and it really help the way they look.  For reference purposes, here is a house I did with windows I printed on the Afinia, http://nvrr49.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-house-3d-printed-down-on-farm-5.html, and here is one I where I used Tichy windows, http://nvrr49.blogspot.com/2014/05/frisco-section-house-3d-printed-in-ho.html

Fully assembled, before I installed a sheet of styrene for the roof.

From the back side, showing the glass block windows.

Completely assemble, only needs glass installed, maybe an interior, since it has those big windows.

As the building stands now, there is a drive up window on the left side in this view.

I used 6x6 styrene downspout, note the the scupper, the funnel at the top is formed in place as part of the 3d printing.  Also, the scupper is hollow, so it look reasonably realistic.

Total print time for all the parts, over 9 hours!

Not a speedy process, but it is hard to beat the detail on the bricks.

If all goes as planned, these will be available as a kit from Show Me Lines in Grandview, MO, or you can contact me direct by leaving a comment on this blog.  Thanks for looking.

Other brick buildings I have 3d printed:

http://nvrr49.blogspot.com/2014/04/bennington-state-bank-bennigton-mn-in.html

http://nvrr49.blogspot.com/2014/04/phillips-66-mclean-tx-3d-printed-in-ho.html

3d printed lap siding structures:

http://nvrr49.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-house-3d-printed-down-on-farm-5.html

http://nvrr49.blogspot.com/2014/01/octagon-barn-3d-printed-down-on-farm-6.html

Concrete block structures 3d printed:

http://nvrr49.blogspot.com/2013/09/slaughter-house-3d-printed-down-on-farm.html

http://nvrr49.blogspot.com/2014/01/shop-building-machinery-shed-redux-down.html

I hope to see you next week at one of my clinics at the National Narrow Gauge Convention.

Memphis store front, 3d printed glass block, HO scale

As one of my experiments in making glass blocks, I was looking for prototype buildings to print, and I ran across this picture of a building in Memphis.  This was taken by Katherine of Chicago, and I found the picture on her flickr account.  I thought this looked like a challenge in many respects.

 The first order of business was to draw up a reasonable representation.  In this case, just for fun, I colored in the drawing.  

Then I exploded the drawing in to printable pieces.  In this case, I will use clear plastic for the glass block, and the natural ABS I generally use on the rest of the building front.  I printed the top concrete section as a separate piece to make it easier to install the marble overlay, and easier to paint.

I was also concerned about which orientation would yield the best print quality.  This is a screen shot of the printer software, and you can see that I oriented the top section upside down on the right, and laying on its back on the left.  Since it was a short print time, so I just printed it both ways, and then used the one that looked the best.  FWIW, the one on its back had the better detail.

For the marble I downloaded a picture for marble from one of the many images on the Internet, and sized it to a scale that I felt looked reasonable.  I did this in PowerPoint, and printed it out on photo paper.  I used the line function in PowerPoint to make the lines to denote the different marble panels, although most are actually different individual images, adjusted to fit, one pixel at a time.  I did many test prints and adjustments to get it to fit the space available.  

 I sealed the paper, front and back, with a clear gloss, then glued it in place using Aleene's Tacky Glue.  I use it for an amazing array of projects.  I should have taken some progress pictures, but I forgot.  The clear plastic is ABS, as it the natural used on the rest of the structure, so the 3d printed parts are solvent welded together with Methylene Chloride.

This is HO scale, so only about 3" wide.

Other prototype structures that I have 3d printed can be seen at these links:

http://nvrr49.blogspot.com/2014/04/bennington-state-bank-bennigton-mn-in.html

http://nvrr49.blogspot.com/2014/04/phillips-66-mclean-tx-3d-printed-in-ho.html

http://nvrr49.blogspot.com/2014/05/frisco-section-house-3d-printed-in-ho.html

http://nvrr49.blogspot.com/2014/06/barry-well-3d-printing-and-vac-u.html

Portable Hog House, Feeder, & Wallow, Down on the Farm #10

I really need to get back to work on this, as it was supposed to be done for the June Turkey Creek NMRA Division meeting, doubt I will get the diorama completed, but if I can make the meeting, I will take what I have.

That was written in early June, and I ended up not getting it done, obviously as one can see by this post.  I also ended up not being able to attend the meeting due to a business meeting,

A couple structures that I am building from strip wood are the portable hog houses and the hog feeders.  The plans for all three structures in this post came from the South Dakota State University web site, and are era appropriate for my 1949 era model railroad.

The plans for the portable hog feeder.

The pile of strip wood, stained with India Ink and alcohol.  I pre-cut the wood to length before I stained it.  I glued them together with yellow wood glue.

And here are the plans for the portable hog house.  There are three versions shown, I opted for the half open front model.

I used sheet wood for the sides and the doors and some strip wood bracing.  I used roofing from Wild West Models.  http://wildwestmodels.com/

A few shots of the the finished structures.  I used some 3d printed scraps for the hinges and the door handle on the shed.  For hinges on the feeder, I used strips of paper. 

Yeah, I have not painted the pigs yet, of put them in a pen.  At this point they are free range hogs.  I will be adding scale corn cobs to the feeders and corn crib.

I know almost nothing about farming, so I thought it odd to have a concrete hog wallow, but it gave me something else to print, so I thought I would include one in the scene.  

Here is the mini-scene with a lot of work to go.  I need to add piping from the windmill to the hog wallow, and from the wallow drain to the creek.  Also water in the wallow.

Obviously I am running behind in my posts, too much work, some volunteer work on the National Narrow Gauge Convention coming up in a few weeks, and a general lack of time and motivation.  

Previous posts in the Down on the Farm series:

1. http://nvrr49.blogspot.com/2013/09/smokehouse-ho-scale-3d-printed-down-on.html
2. http://nvrr49.blogspot.com/2013/09/storm-shelter-down-on-farm-2.html
3. http://nvrr49.blogspot.com/2013/09/slaughter-house-3d-printed-down-on-farm.html
4. http://nvrr49.blogspot.com/2013/11/shop-building-machinery-shed-down-on.html

4A.         http://nvrr49.blogspot.com/2014/01/shop-building-machinery-shed-redux-down.html

5. http://nvrr49.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-house-3d-printed-down-on-farm-5.html
6. http://nvrr49.blogspot.com/2014/01/octagon-barn-3d-printed-down-on-farm-6.html
7. http://nvrr49.blogspot.com/2014/02/farrowing-barn-down-on-farm-8-3d-printed.html
8. http://nvrr49.blogspot.com/2014/02/windmill-tool-shed-woodland-scenics-4.html
9. http://nvrr49.blogspot.com/2014/03/blairline-corn-crib-down-on-farm-9.html
10. http://nvrr49.blogspot.com/2014/06/stone-arch-bridges-3d-printed-down-on.html